JustASC

Richard Gordon, the president of the American Jewish Congress, issued a statement clarifying the status of his organization following reports that it had “suspended its activities after running out of funds.” Gordon said the organization will maintain a “skeletal” staff (I think he means skeleton, unless they don’t intend to feed them) while they ponder their next move:

In the interim, in consultation with our board, we will be considering how to move forward.  We will consider several options, including the possibility of reconstituting the American Jewish Congress as a more streamlined, effective and modern organization that will continue to serve the Jewish community in the United States and abroad and supporting the efforts and security of the State of Israel.

About that last clause — “supporting the efforts and security of the State of Israel.” I’m all for that, but maybe part of the AJCongress’ problem, and that of other now-struggling Jewish orgs, is that they spend too much time, money, and energy doing what too many other groups do anyway. Between AIPAC and J Street, ADL and Peace Now, JINSA and AJCommittee, the federations and the synagogue movements, The Israel Project and the Conference of Presidents  – aren’t there enough Jewish organizations “supporting the efforts and security of the State of Israel” and going after the same dollars to do so?

If I were an AJCongress leader I might ask the following questions: “What can we do that no one else is doing? What wouldn’t get done if we were to disappear? ”

Why not rebuild the brand around something unique — like its top-notch legal affairs department — and leave the Israel advocacy to someone else?

I’m a big fan of Tablet, but I think they stumbled in publishing Lee Smith’s piece on the “mainstreaming” of anti-Semitism without subjecting it to more vigorous editorial scrutiny.

Smith’s thesis seems to be (“seems” is the operative word here — it’s not a very coherent piece) that a number of bloggers for a number of credentialed sites — Phillip Weiss’ Mondoweiss (The Nation Institute), Glenn Greenwald’s blog (Salon) Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish (The Atlantic), and Stephen Walt’s blog (ForeignPolicy.com/The Washington Post Company)  — simultaneously engage in “Jew-baiting” and have become “avatars” of a “cesspool” of anti-Semitic comments from thousands of readers.

What links these bloggers “atop the junk heap” is that they are “obsessed with Israel and the machinations of the U.S. Israel lobby,” and that their blogs inspire posts that turn their web sites into an “open sewer of hate.”

Is Smith calling for a more vigorous culling of the comments sections to weed out the most hateful invective? In part. Is he accusing each of the writers of sharing and sympathizing with the kind of hate espoused by their commenters? He does and he doesn’t — he’s pretty sloppy about distinguishing between what the bloggers write and how the nut-jobs respond. There is an interesting question here about how responsible any pundit is for the audience he or she attracts (a question running through the debate over the Tea Party and racism), but Smith isn’t interested in a debate.

Nor does Smith nail down the argument about how being “obsessed with Israel and the machinations of the U.S. Israel lobby” is anti-Semitism by another name. The argument can be made — Wieseltier tried to make it against Sullivan, and Ron Kampeas has been more successful in demonstrating where Stephen Walt and Weiss cross the line — but Smith just assumes that because someone like Greenwald takes strong issue with AIPAC and U.S. Mideast policy the reader will agree he’s a ”Jew-baiter.”

Anti-Semitism is too serious a charge to level without defining your terms and assembling your evidence precisely. Smith’s essay is a slow pitch for Greenwald and others, who will undoubtedly respond that this proves that one can’t criticze Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism.

NJ’s first Hebrew-language charter school has received the final go-ahead from the state to open this September. The school announced it at their web site:

We are delighted to inform you that Hatikvah International Academy Charter School received final approval from the New Jersey Department of Education to open this September!
 
The state also commended Hatikvah and informed us that out of the eleven schools that received preliminary approval, we were ranked first in our level of preparedness and ability to open a successful elementary school.  This is a proud and humbling experience for us.

We look forward to creating a wonderful, innovative school for all of our children, in partnership with you, our incredible Hatikvah families, and with the community of East Brunswick.  Congratulations to all of us!

All the best,
Board of Trustees

From J.J. Goldberg:

In the course of more than 40 years in the public eye, Twersky was a nationally known student leader, a kibbutz member and Israel Labor Party leader, a Knesset aide, respected Israeli political analyst, Washington correspondent of the Forward and international affairs director of the American Jewish Congress. He was also a published poet and contributor to literary journals, including the Partisan Review. A charismatic figure with a quick wit, he left a profound impact in each of his varied careers.

From Bradley Burston:

I never met anyone who loved Israel more than you. I never met anyone who saw through Israelis like you did. You were built in the mold of the old guys, the realists who succeeded because they were under the mistaken impression that they were dreamers.

From Jeffrey Goldberg:

David was one of those people who devoted his spirit totally to the cause of progressive Zionism, and his voice will be missed, especially now.

The New York Sun:

He took up newspaper work relatively late in a life that had been devoted to Labor Zionism. He instantly showed an uncanny ability to analyze a political situation and sense a scoop where others weren’t looking — and an honesty that brooked no pleading on the right or left as he pursued the truth as he saw it and the Jewish cause for which he lived.

NJJN‘s own Alia Ramer:

Truly, David was one of the most brilliant people you could ever meet. He could remember people, places, things, events from 30 years before in incredible vivid detail. He could analyze and write and think and communicate, all at tremendous speed, seemingly simultaneously. But his people skills were, to put it mildly, lacking (and that’s putting it very, very mildly). When I saw Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, I snickered, “She’s a teddy bear.”

From JTA’s Ami Eden:

One of my favorite things about Twersky is that he never (at least with me) tried to sugarcoat his issues as a manager or how they got him into hot water. Of course, I never worked for him, so it’s easy to pass over this rough spot, to think of him more as a rascally redhead than an angry one, to focus on all the good that he did and the love that so many people had for him.

What’s not easy is coming to come to grips with the fact that there isn’t anyone — with the same mix of insight, independence, dedication to journalism and love of Israel and the Jewish people — for me to call next time I need some advice.

My old pal Alana Newhouse has a good fire-breathing op-ed in the Times today on the Israeli conversion controversy:

[W]hat is driving this process is the desire of a small group of rabbis to expand their authority from narrow questions of conversion to larger questions of Jewish identity. Since what goes for conversion also goes for all other clerical acts, only a few anointed rabbis will be able to determine the authenticity of one’s marriage, divorce, birth, death — and every rite in between.

I’m hearing a resounding silence on this issue from the American Orthodox community, which suggests that even they believe the bill gives the Israeli rabbinate too much power, or that they actually feel it will harm their own interests — especially the ability of Modern Orthodox rabbis outside of Israel to perform conversions.

One of the few Orthodox responses I saw appears in our paper: a federation exec, Arthur Sandman, argues against the bill from an Orthodox perspective:

When we accept that the Jewish People are, despite our differences, one people, we must find a way to live with each other. Israel was conceived as a Jewish State, yes, but not as a halachic state. It was, rather, established as a Western democracy because, from its inception, all Jews who shared the Zionist dream—regardless of their religious perspectives—recognized that the new nation could be built only through the shared endeavor of us all. The proposed legislation compromises this Zionist vision by codifying in civil law that the Chief Rabbinate, with its particular perspective, is singularly empowered to define the standards of conversion in Israel.

NJ Sen. Frank Lautenberg  today announced $1.45 million in federal homeland security funding for 19 New Jersey nonprofit organizations, all but one of which is Jewish. 

“Many organizations fear for the safety of their members, but lack sufficient funds to take additional security measures,” he said. “ This investment will allow nonprofits to secure their facilities and help to prevent an act of terrorism.”

The grants and grantees:

$75,000 for Beth Medrash Govoha of America

$75,000 for B’nai Shalom Jewish Center

$75,000 for Congregation Ahavas Achim

$65,000 for Jewish Center of Teaneck

$75,000 for Jewish Community Center on the Palisades

$75,000 for Jewish Family Service, Inc.

$75,000 for Lubavitch Center of Essex County

$75,000 for Moriah School of Englewood

$74,607 for Roxbury Reform Temple

$75,000 for St. Peter’s Healthcare System

$68,700 for Temple Beth El of Northern Valley

$75,000 for Temple Emanu-El

$56,500 for Temple Emanuel of Pascack Valley

$68,119 for Temple Israel

$75,000 for Temple Sholom

$75,000 for Torah Academy of Bergen County

$75,000 for UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey

$75,000 for Yeshiva of North Jersey

$75,000 for Yeshivat Noam

$70,000 for YM-YWHA of Union County, Inc.

NJ Senator Fank Lautenberg intends to sign a letter expressing his and his colleagues’ dismay with Israel’s pending conversion bill, which non-Orthodox groups says threatens to drive a wedge between their constituents and Israel. According to the Jerusalem Post:

The letter from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), understood to be addressed to Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren, outlines apprehensions over the bill’s language, according to sources familiar with the text. It is circulating for signatures from additional Jewish senators before being delivered to the embassy.

Caley Gray, communications director for Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey), one of the senators signing the letter, explained that “Senator Lautenberg hopes the Knesset does not pass this legislation, which he views as divisive.”

Maybe this is a coincidence,  but when I click on this link for Bill Kristol’s new pro-Israel group, the Emergency Committee for Israel, my system blocks it with the message,  ”Security risk blocked for your protection.”

This is sad: Harvey Pekar, who told his mundane but nevertheless engaging life story in the American Splendor series of comics, has died at age 70. Pekar’s comics, which were created in collaboration with top artists, chronicled a certain kind of Jewish type seldom encountered in the media or popular imagination: the blue collar Jew who never quite grasped the brass ring that propelled so many of his co-religionists into the suburbs and the professions. We all know a cousin or an uncle like Pekar: smart or maybe not-so-very, hard-working but perhaps too curmudgeonly or principled or uncompromising or self-sabotaging to play the kinds of games that spell typical success.

Pekar also inspired one of the great films of the past 10 years: Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s American Splendor, starring Paul Giamatti as Pekar and Hope Davis as his infinitely patient wife Joyce Brabner. Like Pekar himself, the co-star’s peformances and a canny script wring incredible emotion out of the  grayest and least likely of materials.

Years back I saw an ad in the Orthodox Jewish Press selling live chickens to be used in the pre-Yom Kippur ritual of kapparos, in which one’s sins are symbolically transferred to a living fowl as it is swung about one’s head. What caught my eye was a promise that each chicken came with a Pampers diaper — for what seemed like pretty obvious reasons.

Today the Wall Street Journal reports on the fortunes being made in products catering to the pet chicken market, including, you guessed it:

 Before long, Ms. Haldeman had founded ChickenDiapers.com in Hot Springs, Ark.

“Everyone was talking about how there was a need for diapers,” she says, given that chickens typically can’t be potty trained. “Oh, lord, what a mess they make.”

Ms. Haldeman, who is also a full-time chemist, designed a chicken diaper with a replaceable liner. She says it takes her about an hour to stitch one together, and her diapers are available in a variety of colors and patterns, such as rainbow and camouflage. She usually charges between $9 to $14 depending on a bird’s size. 

I wonder if she’s tapped the kapparos market. I’d like to hook her up with the guy in this article, a frum man from Monsey who was fined for having “flaunted” (the word is “flouted”) county Health Department codes by performing the ritual:

Lefkowitz said he wouldn’t pay the fines the Health Department has imposed because he believes it is trying to wrest money from him. He said he tried as much as possible to comply with the rules, but that the county had unrealistic expectations. He called some of the fines “ridiculous.”

“I’m trying to control the chickens, but the chickens are doing what they are doing. I don’t have Pampers for them,” he said, referring to complaints by the Health Department that there were chicken feces and feathers on the ground.